11.21.09
Telepathy a Plugin Away from Mono (Non-ECMA Parts)
Summary: The road to Mono, courtesy of Novell projects; Moonlight never meant to be Silverlight compatible
BACK in July we showed that Novell was integrating Moonlight and Banshee (also see [1, 2, 3]). This is problematic for many reasons and it leads to more interaction or risky interdependencies in GNOME – ones that involve Mono and "illegal" parts of it in particular [1, 2, 3, 4].
Now we find that Telepathy gets a link to Novell’s Banshee. A similar link to Mono also exists in Evolution, which is a Novell product that falls under GNOME.
Separately, in relation to this report about Windows bias in Silverlight (very much anticipated), Oiaohm tells us: “This here is a pure repeat of what Microsoft did to Java [...] Adding platform depend[dent] extensions to try to limit its range.”
What might Moonlight developers (Novell/Microsoft) have to say about this? █
wickedshimmy said,
November 22, 2009 at 6:25 am
I’m sorry, but once again, do you read these articles you link to?
Neil’s project is an extension to Banshee (not Telepathy), so that music sharing in Banshee can be done using the same stack that implements sharing for the rest of the free desktop. Telepathy has no ties to Mono whatsoever, other than a set of generated C# bindings, and nothing that Sandy talks about there is in anyway “extending” Telepathy, with Mono-based software or anything else.
It seems to me that what Neil did is what you would applaud elsewhere: using the standard protocol so that Banshee’s music sharing isn’t inventing its own non-interoperable interface.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 am
I saw that. The point is that inter-app integration in GNOME involves Mono and Moonlight, usually thanks to Novell.
Users of Telepathy will have another reason to install Banshee.
wickedshimmy Reply:
November 22nd, 2009 at 7:38 am
The fact is Rhythmbox, or Amarok, or Exaile or whatever else could just as easily implement an identical feature (or perhaps they have already, I’m not overly familiar with any of them) in such a way people using Banshee would be under no obligation to make their friends or families use Banshee to benefit from this work, thanks to Telepathy, and I fail to see what could possibly be bad about this.
I’m aware that your personal preference would be for Banshee to make no feature improvements at all and cease development and distribution, but in a real world where that’s not very likely, your argument seems to be: “project I don’t approve offers new features, which means more for me not to approve of”, which is certainly your perogative, but the fact is that in this case, the developer community around Banshee showed more ambition and initiative to implement this, which is pretty unimpeachable from a technical and community standpoint surrounding the project.
Note too that Neil worked under the Google Summer of Code for GNOME (not Mono), is in no way associated with Novell, and was mentored by Bertrand Lorentz, one of the Banshee developers who also has no Novell association.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
November 22nd, 2009 at 7:53 am
It is not about the plug-in specifically. Banshee is a Novell project which is only suitable for use by Novell customers (non-ECMA parts). For that reason alone (practical too, not just legal) it needs to be avoided.